Anionic surfactant compositions are well known in the art and are desirable components in liquid detergents due to their good cleaning ability, especially with respect to hydrophobic greasy soil removal. However, the incorporation of anionic surfactants in typical detergent compositions results in high sudsing formulations.
A number of systems have been described in the art for use in detergent compositions in order to counter act the sudsing ability of the surfactants. Such suds suppressing systems include anti-foam agents such as silicone. However, anti-foam agents have problems associated with them such as the difficulty to maintain them as a dispersion in liquid compositions. In addition silicone anti-foam agents are difficult to process and are expensive.
Therefore it is an object of the present invention to provide a liquid detergent composition comprising an anionic surfactant, said composition having a controlled sudsing profile, said composition requiring a minimum amount of conventional suds suppressing agents.
It has now been found that this can be achieved by formulating a liquid detergent composition comprising a conventional anionic surfactant in combination with an -branched anionic surfactant.
It has unexpectedly been found that such surfactant combinations provide controlled sudsing, and simultaneously improve said compositions' performance on hydrophobic greasy soil removal.
Another advantage of the present invention is that the sudsing is reduced by the adaptation of straight chain anionic surfactants to their -branched counterparts, i.e. Guerbet anionic surfactants and thus other suds suppressing agent may only be required in minimum amounts.
Another advantage of the present invention is that the surfactants are easier to formulate due to the increased solubility of the surfactant. Furthermore, said compositions are easier to form as `concentrated` compositions because of the almost total omission of conventional suds suppressing agents. In addition the compositions are cheaper to formulate.
Another advantage of the compositions of the present invention is that said compositions are phase stable.
The term "Guerbet" surfactant as used herein refers to branched surfactants derived from 2-alkyl-alkanol.
Guerbet surfactants are known in the art. DE 41 11 335 discloses a low sudsing ternary surfactant mixture comprising an alkylglycoside, linear and branched secondary dialkylethersulphates and sulphate and sulphonate anionic surfactants. There is no specific mention of Guerbet anionic surfactants.
WO 91/16409 discloses a liquid detergent composition comprising branched primary alkyl sulphates. There is no mention of suds suppressing properties or any specific mention of Guerbet anionic surfactants.